followed in many places the complete cleansing of the streets, as are
stated by _Mr. Bland_, medical officer of the Macclesfield Union:—
“To show the value of police regulations in removing any improper
accumulations of foul, and putrid matter, where a deadly poison is
generated, I have a distinct recollection that, when the cholera
appeared in Macclesfield, not only was that fatal disease arrested
somewhat in its progress by the active vigilance exercised by the
gentlemen in seeing that in their several districts all offending
deposits were removed, and all pest-houses cleansed, that for several
months after the town had undergone this salutary inspection, and the
people made alive to the pernicious effects of the dunghill, fever of
the worst or contagious form scarcely appeared in the usual
localities, although it was at the autumnal season of the year. I
likewise noticed in spring-time following, when the filth had begun to
accumulate on the surface in certain parts of the town, a severe
return of contagious diseases, fever in all its stages, and a very
fatal epidemic small-pox.”
Similar cases were frequently noticed in the reports from Scotland; but
when the alarm passed away, the habitual neglect of this description of
cleanliness returned.
In the consideration of the evidence about to be submitted as to the
condition of the streets on the external condition of the residences of
the labouring classes, it should be borne in mind that the external
condition of the dwelling powerfully and immediately affects its
internal cleanliness and general economy.
The description of a large proportion of the streets inhabited by the
working classes in Manchester by Dr. Baron Howard, and those of Leeds by
Mr. Baker, those of Liverpool by Dr. Duncan, might be extended to
Glasgow and other places. _Dr. Howard_ states:—
“That the filthy and disgraceful state of many of the streets in these
densely populated and neglected parts of the town where the indigent
poor chiefly reside cannot fail to exercise a most baneful influence
over their health is an inference which experience has fully proved to
be well founded; and no fact is better established than that a large
proportion of the causes of fever which occur in Manchester originate
in these situations. Of the 182 patients admitted into the temporary
fever hospital in Balloon-street, 135 at least came from unpaved or
otherwise filthy streets, or from confined and dirty courts and
alleys. Many of the streets in which cases of fever are common are so
deep in mire, or so full of hollows and heaps of refuse that the
vehicle used for conveying the patients to the House of Recovery often
cannot be driven along them, and the patients are obliged to be
carried to it from considerable distances. Whole streets in these
quarters are unpaved and without drains or main-sewers, are worn into
deep ruts and holes, in which water constantly stagnates, and are so
covered with refuse and excrementitious matter as to be almost
impassable from depth of mud, and intolerable from stench. In the
narrow lanes, confined courts and alleys, leading from these, similar
nuisances exist, if possible, to a still greater extent; and as
ventilation is here more obstructed, their effects are still more
pernicious. In many of these places are to be seen privies in the most
disgusting state of filth, open cesspools, obstructed drains, ditches
full of stagnant water, dunghills, pigsties, &c., from which the most
abominable odours are emitted. But dwellings perhaps are still more
insalubrious in those cottages situated at the backs of the houses
fronting the street, the only entrance to which is through some
nameless narrow passage, converted generally, as if by common consent,
into a receptacle for ordure and the most offensive kinds of filth.
The doors of these hovels very commonly open upon the uncovered
cesspool, which receives the contents of the privy belonging to the
front house, and all the refuse cast out from it, as if it had been
designedly contrived to render them as loathsome and unhealthy as
possible. Surrounded on all sides by high walls, no current of air can
gain access to disperse or dilute the noxious effluvia, or disturb the
reeking atmosphere of these areas. Where there happens to be less
crowding, and any ground remains unbuilt upon, it is generally
undrained, contains pools of stagnant water, and is made a depôt for
dunghills and all kinds of filth.”
Of 687 streets, inspected by a voluntary association in that town, 248
were reported as being unpaved, 112 ill ventilated, 352 as containing
stagnant pools, heaps of refuse, ordure, &c.
“The state of some of the streets and courts examined was found by
tile inspectors abominable beyond description, and exhibited a
melancholy picture of the filthy condition and unwholesome atmosphere
in which a large portion of our poor are doomed to live.
“As an example I will extract the description given of Little Ireland
from the proceedings of the Special Board of Health, which I have been
permitted to examine through the kindness of the borough-reeve, John
Brooks, Esq.:—
“‘The undersigned having been deputed by the Special Board of Health
to inquire into the state of Little Ireland, begs to report that, in
some of the streets and courts abutting, the sewers are all in a most
wretched state, and quite inadequate to carry off the surface water,
not to mention the slops thrown down by the inhabitants in about 200
houses. The privies are in a most disgraceful state, inaccessible from
filth, and too few for the accommodation of the number of people, the
average number being two to 250 people. The upper rooms are, with few
exceptions, very dirty, and the cellars much worse, all damp, and some
occasionally overflowed. The cellars consist of two rooms on a floor,
each nine or ten feet square, some inhabited by ten persons, others by
more; in many the people have no beds, and keep each other warm by
close stowage on shavings, straw, &c.; a change of linen or clothes is
an exception to the common practice. Many of the back-rooms, where
they sleep, have no other means of ventilation than from the front
rooms. Some of the cellars on the lower ground were once filled up as
uninhabitable, but one is now occupied by a weaver, and he has stopped
up the drain with clay to prevent the water flowing from it into his
cellar, and mops up the water every morning.’
“The above description represents as faithfully the present state of
this place as it did its condition eight years ago. In addition to the
circumstances here mentioned, the unhealthiness of this spot is
further increased by its low and damp situation, in a deep hollow,
bounded on one side by a filthy and stinking brook, which readily
overflows after rain; on another, by a very steep embankment; and on
another, by a high wall, which separates it from the gas-works, and
surrounded moreover by numerous high factories. * * *
“In the open space in the centre, which was formerly uncovered,
numerous pigsties are now erected, which add, if possible, to its
insalubrity. All the streets on the west side of the square are
blocked up at the end by a high wall, so that each forms a
_cul-de-sac_, a mode of construction which precludes the possibility
of effectual ventilation. Close to this wall, at the upper end of
these streets, are placed filthy and dilapidated privies, with large
open cesspools, which are frequently full to overflowing. The present
condition of those in Bent and James Leigh-streets are disgusting and
offensive beyond description.”
_Mr. Baker_ in his report on the sanitary condition of the residences of
the labouring classes in Leeds, thus describes their external
condition:—
“The river Aire, which courses about a mile and a half through the
town, is liable suddenly to overflow from violent or continued rains,
or from the sudden thawing of heavy falls of snow. The lower parts and
dwellings, both in its vicinity and in that of the becks, are not
unfrequently therefore inundated; and as the depth of the cellars is
below the means of drainage, the water has to be pumped out by
hand-pumps on to the surface of the streets. In those parts of the
town, and particularly where the humbler classes reside, during these
inundations, and where there are small sewers, the water rises through
them into the cellars, creating miasmatic exhalations, and leaving
offensive refuse, exceedingly prejudicial to the health as well as to
the comfort of the inhabitants. It was stated, on the authority of one
of the registrars, that during a season remarkable for an
unprecedented continuation of hot weather, that in one of these
localities, the deaths were as three to two, while in other parts of
the town, at the same period, they were as two to three. The condition
of the Timble Bridge beck is doubtless much worse for drainage
purposes than formerly, for the bottom has been raised by continual
deposits, until the oldest water-wheel upon it has had to be removed
as useless and inoperative; and stepping-stones, once the means of
passage over it, are at this moment said to be buried under the
accumulation of years, as much as one or two feet in depth. It is
quite clear, therefore, that that which was once the main receptacle
for the drainage of an entire district is, in its present state, no
longer capable of fulfilling that purpose; and that though a
considerable amount of drainage might still be effected by it, yet,
unless emptied of its superfluous matter, it cannot now be made
available for the wants of the entire population on its course.
“In an inundation about the period of 1838 or 1839, which happened in
the night, this beck overflowed its boundaries so greatly, and
regurgitated so powerfully into petty drains communicating with houses
100 yards distant from its line, that many of the inhabitants were
floated in their beds, and fever to a large amount occurred from the
damp and exhalations which it occasioned. Of the 586 streets of Leeds,
68 only are paved by the town, _i. e._, by the local authorities; the
remainder are either paved by owners, or are partly paved, or are
totally unpaved, with the surfaces broken in every direction, and
ashes and filth of every description accumulated upon many of them. In
the manufacturing towns of England, most of which have enlarged with
great rapidity, the additions have been made without regard to either
the personal comfort of the inhabitants or the necessities which
congregation requires. To build the largest number of cottages on the
smallest allowable space seems to have been the original view of the
speculators, and the having the houses up and tenanted, the _ne plus
ultra_ of their desires. Thus neighbourhoods have arisen in which
there is neither water nor out-offices, nor any conveniences for the
absolute domestic wants of the occupiers. But more than this, the land
has been disposed of in so many small lots, to petty proprietors, who
have subsequently built at pleasure, both as to outward form and
inward ideas, that the streets present all sorts of incongruities in
the architecture; causeways dangerous on account of steps, cellar
windows without protection, here and there posts and rails, and
everywhere clothes-lines intersecting them, by which repeated
accidents have been occasioned. During the collection of the
statistical information by the Town Council, many cases of broken legs
by these unprotected cellars, and of horsemen dismounted by neglected
clothes-lines hanging across the streets, were recorded.
“It might be imagined that at least the streets over which the town
surveyors have a legal right to exercise control would be sewered. But
this is not the case; of the 68 streets which they superintend, 19 are
not sewered at all, and 10 are only partly so; nay, it is only within
the three or four years past that a sewer has been completed through
the main street for two of the most populous wards of the town,
embracing together a population of 30,540 persons, by which to carry
off the surface and drainage water of an elevation of 150 feet, where,
indeed, there could be no excuse for want of sufficient fall. I have
seen, in the neighbourhood to which I now refer, an attempt made to
drain the cottage houses into a small drain passing under the
causeway, and which afterwards had to be continued through a small
sewer, and through private property, by a circuitous route, in order
to reach its natural outlet, and the water from the surveyors’ drain
regurgitate into the cutting from the dwellings. It only needs to be
pointed out that the sewer which has subsequently been made, and is
most effective, is an evidence of the previous practicability of a
work so essential to the welfare of the people; but, I may add, that
many of the inhabitants of districts a little further distant from the
town, where fever is always rife, are yet obliged to use cesspools
which are constructed under their very doors, for the want of the
continuation of this desirable measure.
“Along the line of these two wards, and down the street which divides
them, and where this sewer has been recently made, numbers of streets
have been formed and houses erected without pavement, and hence
without surface drainage—without sewers—or if under drainage can be
called sewers, then with such as, becoming choked in a few months, are
even worse than if they were altogether without. The surface of these
streets is considerably elevated by accumulated ashes and filth,
untouched by any scavenger; they form nuclei of disease exhaled from a
thousand sources. Here and there stagnant water, and channels so
offensive that they have been declared to be unbearable, lie under the
doorways of the uncomplaining poor; and privies so laden with ashes
and excrementitious matter as to be unuseable prevail, till the
streets themselves become offensive from deposits of this description;
in short, there is generally pervading these localities a want of the
common conveniences of life.
“The courts and _culs-de-sac_ exist everywhere. The building of houses
back to back occasions this in a great measure. It is in fact part of
the economy of buildings that are to pay a good per centage. In one
_cul-de-sac_, in the town of Leeds, there are 34 houses, and in
ordinary times, there dwell in these houses 340 persons, or ten to
every house; but as these houses are many of them receiving houses for
itinerant labourers, during the periods of hay-time and harvest and
the fairs, at least twice that number are then here congregated. The
name of this place is the Boot and Shoe-yard, in Kirkgate, a location
from whence the Commissioners removed, in the days of the cholera, 75
cart-loads of manure, which had been untouched for years, and where
there now exists a surface of human excrement of very considerable
extent, to which these impure and unventilated dwellings are
additionally exposed. This property is said to pay the best annual
interest of any cottage property in the borough.”
_Mr. Shaw_, the medical officer of the Hindley district of the Wigan
union, after giving a similar description of the streets of that town,
adds:—
“The greater number of cases of fever in Tuce is in a great degree to
be accounted for from the extremely filthy state of those places where
it has been worst. Some of the cases were much worse than others,
several being of the malignant kind of typhus. Most of the cases
happened in Broom-street, in Tuce, a very uncleanly place, whole pools
of stagnant water, decayed animal and vegetable matter, and many other
nuisances of alike description lying in heaps from one end of the
street to the other. It is extremely probable a little attention to
these matters would save the inhabitants from many of the diseases
with which they are now continually affected.”
_Dr. Waite_, in his report on the condition of the population at Lynn,
states:—
“I have seen typhus fever rage in families, where the refuse of a
market-gardener was suffered to accumulate in a hole, immediately
before three or four houses, whilst families at fifty yards distant
from it were perfectly free.”
The report by _Mr. Anderson_, solicitor, on the sanitary condition of
Inverness, exhibits the external features of the condition in which
large proportions of the town population in Scotland are still allowed
to remain in respect to all these defects:—
“From the very open or porous character of the subsoil, the grounds in
and around Inverness are seldom retentive of surface-water; and as
there is also a considerable inclination of the plain towards the
river, a good _drainage_ could be easily procured from almost every
part of the town. With the exception, however, of the principal
streets or thoroughfares, in which the best houses and shops are
situated, there are but few covered common sewers; and in the suburbs
generally, and from all the side alleys and closes, rain-water and
other accumulations pass away only by means of surface or open drains.
Hence among the dwellings of the poorer classes _stagnant pools_ very
frequently occur, and the drainage in these places, naturally bad
enough, is often purposely obstructed by the people, for the purpose
of adding to their _dunghill_ heaps or middens, which, as manure for
their potatoe-grounds, form the chief treasures of the poorer
cottagers and labourers. A gas and water company, established some
years ago, has afforded a great increase of comfort and cleanliness to
the buildings along the main thoroughfares; but to the back closes and
suburbs such _luxuries_ have not yet been extended, and hence the want
of order, decency, and comfort are painfully observable among them.
_Water-closets_ and _public privies_ are both rare, the consequences
of which, morally as well as physically, may be easily imagined, and
no doubt much infectious disease, if not occasioned, is harboured and
perpetuated by the want of them. The disgusting state of all the
bye-lanes and roads about Inverness proves what the people must suffer
on this account.
“As already stated, the dwellings of the humbler classes are in
general only _one_ story high, that is, they consist of a ground-floor
divided into two or three small apartments, with two or three
garret-rooms in the roof above, which is covered externally with turf
or straw thatch. Such buildings are often intermixed with houses of a
better description, and from being but seldom painted or whitewashed,
they have not a cheerful nor cleanly aspect. Most of them are provided
with small back courts or gardens, in which a few common vegetables
are grown; but their principal value is as stances for _pig-houses_
and dunghills, which in many instances are improperly allowed to rest
upon or touch the dwelling-houses; while it is not to be disguised
that cases exist where the _pig_, the _horse_, and the _cow_ all live
under the same roof with their owners, and the manure allowed to
accumulate there also. It is very common for a labourer’s _family_ to
have only a single apartment, or a room and a closet, while one room
is the usual accommodation rented by single persons, and that
frequently without a particle of ground attached.
“Amidst such a combination of unwholesome circumstances, it is rather
wonderful that malignant fever does not very greatly prevail in this
town. It is scarcely ever entirely free of it, and occasionally it
breaks out in some of its most contagious and dangerous forms, such as
measles, scarlet and typhus fever, and sometimes even small-pox,
spreading upwards among all classes of the community. The writer is
strongly inclined to believe that the comparative healthiness of
Inverness, notwithstanding its low and undrained position, is owing
chiefly to the salubrity of its climate, as influenced by its
situation, and the natural porousness of the soil.”
_The Provost of Inverness_, at the time the report was made, gives the
following description of the town:—
“Inverness is a nice town, situated in a most beautiful country, and
with every facility for cleanliness and comfort. The people are,
generally speaking, a nice people, but their sufferance of nastiness
is past endurance. Contagious fever is seldom or ever absent; but for
many years it has seldom been rife in its pestiferous influence. The
people owe this more to the kindness of Almighty God than to any means
taken or observed for its prevention. There are very few houses in
town which can boast of either water-closet or privy, and only two or
three public privies in the better part of the place exist for the
great bulk of the inhabitants. Hence there is not a street, lane, or
approach to it that is not disgustingly defiled at all times, so much
so as to render the whole place an absolute nuisance. The _midden_ is
the chief object of the humble, and though enough of water for
purposes of cleanliness may be had by little trouble, still as the
ablutions are seldom, MUCH filth in-doors and out of doors _must_ be
their portion. When cholera prevailed in Inverness, it was more fatal
than in almost any other town of its population in Britain.”
Such is the absence of civic economy in some of our towns that their
condition in respect to cleanliness is almost as bad as that of an
encamped horde, or an undisciplined soldiery. Mr. Baker applies to Leeds
the observations made by Sir John Pringle in his Treatise on the
Diseases of the Army, but they are equally applicable to the districts
occupied by the labouring classes wherever this inquiry has been
carried:—
“‘The chief cause of dysentery appears to be the foul straw and the
privies; for as soon as we had left that ground on which we had been
long encamped the sickness visibly abated.’ And again he says, ‘The
greatest source of dysenteric affections appears to be the privies.’
And again, speaking of bad air as producing epidemics, he systematizes
the mediate agent thus; ‘1st, Marsh effluvia; 2ndly, Encampment near
trees; 3rdly, The privies and foul straw of a camp; and 4thly, A pent,
corrupt, and vitiated atmosphere.’”
The discipline of the army has advanced beyond the civic economy of the
towns. In the standing orders given and enforced by the late General
Crauford there are the following from Article 2, on the interior
regimental arrangements on arriving in camp or quarters:—
“It must be explained to the men, as a standing order, that when no
regular necessaries are made, nor any particular spot pointed out for
easing themselves, they are to go to the rear, at least 200 yards,
beyond the sentries of the rear guard; all men disobeying this order
must be punished.
“The captain of the day and the quarter-master under the commanding
officers, are particularly responsible for the cleanliness of the camp
of each regiment; and the field officer of the inlying piquet, who is
charged with the superintendence of the police, and cleanliness of the
camp or quarters of the brigade, will give such orders upon the
subject as may be necessary to the captain of the day.”
The towns whose population never change their encampment, have no such
care, and whilst the houses, streets, courts, lanes, and streams, are
polluted and rendered pestilential, the civic officers have generally
contented themselves with the most barbarous expedients, or sit still
amidst the pollution, with the resignation of Turkish fatalists, under
the supposed destiny of the prevalent ignorance, sloth, and filth.
Whilst such neglects are visited by the scourge of a regularly recurring
pestilence and ravages of death more severe than a war, it may be
confidently stated that the exercise of attention, care, and industry,
directed by science in their removal, will not only be attended by
exemptions from the pains of the visitation, but with exemptions from
pecuniary burdens, and with promise even of the profits of increased
production to the community.
This will appear from an examination of the present mode of removing the
refuse from towns, and contrasting it with improved methods; and first
with relation to the refuse of the houses:—